Ben Carson, author of book about the Constitution, incorrectly states that Thomas Jefferson crafted it

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson incorrectly stated that Thomas Jefferson "tried to craft our Constitution in a way that it would control people's natural tendencies," although Jefferson was not involved in writing the U.S. Constitution. (C-SPAN)

It’s a common misconception that Thomas Jefferson participated in drafting the U.S. Constitution in 1787. But as Republican presidential candidate and retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson points out in his latest book, “A More Perfect Union,” Jefferson was “missing in action,” serving in Paris as minister to France.

That did not stop Carson from praising Jefferson in a C-Span interview Sunday as one of the most impressive of the Founding Fathers because he “tried to craft our Constitution in a way that it would control peoples’ natural tendencies and control the natural growth of the government.”

It’s not the first time Carson has abused Jefferson’s history. “Thomas Jefferson himself said, ‘Gun control works great for the people who are law-abiding citizens and it does nothing for the criminals, and all it does is put the people at risk,’ ” he told Fox’s Neil Cavuto after the shootings at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., in early October. Jefferson never said that.

In his book, Carson repeated a version of the same statement, noting what he called “Thomas Jefferson’s warning: ‘Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather than encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

The supposed Jefferson comment on gun control is listed among many “spurious” quotations by the Monticello Web site. “This is not something Jefferson wrote,” say the researchers at Monticello, but rather comes from a passage he included in his “Legal Commonplace Book.” The passage, they note, was written by Cesare Beccaria in his “Essay on Crimes and Punishments” and was copied by Jefferson.

Oddly, Carson’s footnote to the quote duly notes that it comes from Beccaria and not Jefferson.

Carson’s grasp of the founding era has proven weak in the past. Earlier this month he asserted that “every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience,” an outlandish claim considering that all the members of the Continental Congress, which approved the Declaration, had been elected by Colonial assemblies and that the primary author of the document, Thomas Jefferson, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, John Adams to the Massachusetts Assembly, Ben Franklin to the Pennsylvania Assembly and Roger Sherman to the Connecticut General Assembly. The Post’s Fact Checker Glenn Kessler counted 27 signers of the 51 who had at least some elected office experience.

Fred BarbashFred Barbash has been with The Washington Post for 30 plus years in a multitude of roles including but not limited to Supreme Court reporter, National editor, London bureau chief and founding editor of The Post's Morning Mix. He has covered all three branches of government and courts on every level and has written widely on Constitutional history. Follow

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